If you’ve ever dressed as a musician to see them in concert, dutifully sewn metal band patches onto a "battle jacket," or decorated a cowboy hat to wear to a show, you’ll feel personally seen by this episode. This week, we discuss modern trends in concert fashion and how the threads we choose to brandish can display our fandom. Through the lens of pop and metal culture, we converse about early displays of fan merchandise and debate which fan base may have originated the cowboy hat decorating trend. Most importantly, we ask the age-old question: Are you a poser for wearing a band t-shirt to a gig? We shall see…

Links:

Pinterest Board

Carrie Brownstein, “Concert Outfits: A Brief History” (NPR)

Lauren Alex O’Hagan, “'My Musical Armor': Exploring Metalhead Identity through the Battle Jacket” (Taylor & Francis Online)

Madeleine Schulz, “Did the arena tour kill festival fashion?” (Vogue Business)

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Timestamps:

Intro 00:00

Did the arena tour kill festival fashion? 00:17

Fan-Artist-Fan Connection 01:48

Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour 02:44

Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts Tour 05:17

Carrie Brownstein’s “Concert Outfits: A Brief History” 06:02

Early Concert Fashion and Fan Merchandise During Beatlemania 08:52

Madonna Lookalike Contest 11:13

Chappell Roan’s Concert Themes 12:15

Battle Jackets in Metal Culture 13:13

Cowboy Hats 16:23

Band T-Shirts 21:42

Are you a poser for wearing a band t-shirt to a gig? 23:39

Rave Culture 26:14

What artist do you own the most merch for? 27:17

Outro 28:35

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